Late-night shenanigans are back on the menu!

There was a while in 2005 when you knew that on Fri­day and Sat­ur­day nights you could go to Indi­go, and they’d be open, and there’d be Nixx-Til-Sixx spin­ning every­thing from Bloc Par­ty to Mot­ley Crue and you could drink until 6am. And then that stopped and it sucked. Fast foward to now though, and in 2008, Indi­go is now San Fran­cis­co Bath­house, and Nixx-Til-Sixx has been replaced by the fab­u­lous DJ Doo­fus, but the same thing is hap­pen­ing.

All night long, baby. Just like Lionel promised. 1 a.m til 6 a.m. All week­end. Every week­end. Cheap bev­er­ages. Rotat­ing djs. Open when oth­ers bars close. Host­ed by djdooo­fus and the nice staff at San Fran. It’s a cel­e­bra­tion, bitch­es!

Wel­come to your new favourite place to go when every­thing else has already shut. We’ll see you there.

Cinephilia: Opening This Week

The Other Boleyn Girl posterAfter the excite­ment of the pre-Oscar rush it’s anoth­er qui­et week at the cin­e­ma. Open­ing all over town (that’s Read­ings, Empire, Pent­house, Regent-on-Man­ners and Light­house Petone) is the his­tor­i­cal dra­ma The Oth­er Boleyn Girl fea­tur­ing the dream team of Natal­ie Port­man and Scar­lett Johans­son along with Eric Bana as ‘Enery the Eighth.

Even more his­tor­i­cal (at least in terms of dis­tance if not accu­ra­cy) is 10,000 B.C. which stars our own Cliff Cur­tis as a char­ac­ter called Tic’Tic (I kid you not). Direct­ed by Inde­pen­dence Day’s Roland Emmerich, 10,000 B.C. was par­tial­ly filmed in New Zealand last year and tells the sto­ry of a young mam­moth hunter’s des­per­ate efforts to save his tribe. There’s no sign of Raquel Welch but Camil­la Belle (When a Stranger Calls) comes off the bench to play eye-can­dy: Read­ings and Regent-on-Man­ners.

If nei­ther of these take your fan­cy, there are sneak pre­views again this week­end of the Simon Pegg rom-com Run Fat­boy Run (direct­ed by his good mate David Schwim­mer). You’ll find that at Read­ings, Empire, Regent-on-Man­ners and Pent­house today, Sat­ur­day and Sun­day only.

All three of these titles will be reviewed at Funer­als & Snakes next Wednes­day (and in the Cap­i­tal Times on the same day). Mean­while, tick­ets have gone on sale for the 2008 World Cin­e­ma Show­case which is an absolute doozy this year — a wor­thy com­peti­tor to the main Fes­ti­val. And the Film Soci­ety got under way on Mon­day which must mean that Sum­mer is near­ly over.

Rustic Mexican

Well we rushed down to the new venue for Viva Mex­i­co this evening and thor­ough­ly enjoyed that they’d almost com­plete­ly run out of stock!

Viva Mexico

Luck­i­ly they agreed to sell us what they still had… which was some pret­ty good enchi­ladas.

Hutty goodtimes

The Hutt is a seething mass of cul­ture (as if you did­n’t know), and at the moment there is a par­tic­u­lar­ly splen­did out­door exhi­bi­tion of sculp­ture, Shape Shifter. The art works are for sale, and we at the Welling­ton­ista Tow­ers feel a few would look just the thing in the foy­er. The exhi­bi­tion is at the Civic Gar­dens, next to the Hor­ti­cul­tur­al Hall and oppo­site the Dowse.

Why not make a real trip of it, and come out on Sat­ur­day for the Petone Fies­ta. This street car­ni­val fea­tures a vibrant and eclec­tic mix of music, food, the­atre, arts and crafts. A cer­tain shop may even be open espe­cial­ly late for the fun , and a cer­tain shop­keep­er may be guz­zling grog to make the fun fun­ner, but that is anoth­er sto­ry…

Petone Fies­ta, Jack­son St, 6pm-10pm 8th March.

Shape Shifter, Civic Gar­dens, 22 Feb­ru­ary — 16 March.

Yes, you can has synth!


The L.E.Ds are play­ing Mighty Mighty on Fri­day night, and you should go along. But make sure not to par­ty too hard and ren­der your­self inca­pable of attend­ing the offi­cial New­town­ista flat­warm­ing the next day…

3 things Miramar needs

  1. Mesh net­work
  2. The cin­e­ma open
  3. Stat­ues of Pil­lars of Arg­onath either side of ‘the cut­ting’

Read why …

A city littered with poetry

Now, every­body has seen the poet­ry which seems to appear just about every­where down near the lagoon and around Te Papa, right?

This one took me by sur­prise though.

Fiona Kidman, Speaking with my grandmothers

It’s Fiona Kid­man, and is in such a com­par­a­tive­ly out-of-the-way place I lit­er­al­ly stum­bled across it.

The full text of the poem is here.

But can you guess where the pic­ture was tak­en?

Something fishy going on

Which water­front restau­rant, famous for its seafood, is unlike­ly to be telling its guests that their spe­cial fish de jour Sole is actu­al­ly frozen, not fresh?

Mo’ Ho?

Some have accused Mojo of becom­ing Welling­ton’s answer to Star­bucks, but accord­ing to one blog­ger, maybe they’re more like Hoot­ers. Appar­ent­ly, “All the female staff have their shirts but­toned down to the low­est fea­si­ble but­ton mean­ing that any move­ment will expose a lit­tle more breast than your aver­age cafe.” Is this a new moral low for cof­fee mar­ket­ing? Such a major inci­dent required fear­less inves­tiga­tive report­ing, so a fly was dis­patched to Mojo to find out…

Cinephilia: Opening This Week

Just in time for the week­end, here’s a quick run down of the films open­ing this week in cin­e­mas across town.

Lady Chatterely poster Return­ing from last year’s Film Fes­ti­val is Lady Chat­ter­ley, a French adap­ta­tion of an ear­li­er (“kinder, gen­tler” accord­ing to Ebert) ver­sion of D. H. Lawrence’s famous erot­ic nov­el Lady Chat­ter­ley’s Lover. It sounds like it could have been titled There Will Be Sex: Rial­to only.

Also return­ing, but from the more recent French Film Fes­ti­val is big-bud­get cos­tume dra­ma Molière, about the great drama­tist played by Romain Duris.That one is a Pent­house exclu­sive.

Final­ly this week, 300’s Ger­ard But­ler romances Hilary Swank from the dead in P.S., I Love You. Described by one review­er as hav­ing a “high ick fac­tor”. Read­ings and Regent-on-Man­ners.

All these films will be reviewed at Funer­als & Snakes by next Wednes­day (and in the Cap­i­tal Times on the same day).